The Optimus G is a phone you'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard about at this point, but pricing and availability information for the US has been surprisingly scant up until now. We knew it was coming to AT&T and Sprint, but in regards to when and how much, "soon" and "some amount of money" were really all we had.

Today, on its official blog, AT&T announced that the Optimus G will be available for pre-order starting October 16 (at this link), and you'll have to cough up $199 and either start a 2-year contract or renew your existing AT&T agreement to get it at that price. It'll be available in stores and online on November 2nd.

The Optimus G, as a quick refresher, is the first mass-market phone to contain a Qualcomm S4 Pro quad-core processor, which by all accounts is currently the most powerful mobile chipset on the market. I've been using one for a few days now, and I have to say, it is fast. We'll have our review of the Optimus G for AT&T and Sprint up some time this week, so if you're on the fence about this phone, it may be worth waiting just a little bit yet before hitting that "order" button.

AT&T Consumer Blog